Lost & Found
by bacta.junkie
Summary: Luna's missing. Draco goes looking for her. Sad.


**I was in the mood to write a tragedy. So I did.**

* * *

She was gone.

Not that it was particularly notable to him, anyway. He hadn't seen her in years. Sure, he thought about her all the time; thought about the way she'd smile at him when he brought her meals in the dungeon. Thought about the way the moonlight reflected off of her hair through the barred windows of the dungeon. Thought about the way she'd tell him it'd work out in the end.

She was right, of course. She always was.

But now she was gone.

* * *

He had received an owl from her father, asking if he knew where she was. She had told him she was going looking for something one evening, and hadn't returned. Had Draco seen her?

No, Draco wrote back. He hadn't seen her.

He went about his life as usual, the thought nagging at the back of his mind. He'd catch glimpses of blonde, hear little snippets of laughter that could've only been in her voice. But she was never there. He'd only imagined it.

* * *

He found himself leaving his flat every now and then, late at night when he couldn't sleep, to go looking for her. The odds of him finding her were astronomical, but the time spent walking around muggle London late at night was good for clearing his thoughts.

A glimpse of blonde. A giggle. His eyes darted to where he'd seen-

Nothing.

Of course it was nothing. She was missing. She wouldn't turn up in the streets of London; she'd be somewhere in the middle of nowhere, having tea with Centaurs or something.

* * *

He decided he'd pay her father a visit someday soon. Maybe he'd have some clues.

He knocked on the door of the small, odd looking house. He vaguely remembered hearing of its destruction during the war. It was sobering.

The door opened, and Xenophelius gestured for Draco to come inside.

The man looked broken, like he'd lost any reason to live.

He offered Draco tea. Draco accepted.

* * *

Draco sat on the oddly shaped couch, drinking from an oddly shaped cup, asking an oddly dressed man about the whereabouts of his misplaced odd daughter.

"How long ago did she go missing?"

"Three weeks was the last time I saw her. She left shortly after dinner, wearing a heavy raincoat. It wasn't raining."

"Did she say why she left?"

"She said she was going looking for something, and she wasn't sure when she'd be back."

"Did she leave any hints as to what she was looking for?"

"Mister Malfoy, there's a reason I owled you first."

"You owled me first?"

"Yes. As soon as I realized she was missing, I contacted you."

"What reason is that?"

"The object she was looking for, whatever it was, it belonged to you. That's all she told me about it."

Draco thought for a moment.

"I know where she is. There's only one place she would know where to find something I lost."

"Where?" The aging man's eyes lit up with hope.

"Hogwarts."

* * *

Draco took two weeks off his job at the ministry. When they were up, and he was due to return, he filed his resignation. This was more important.

The staff of the school was very cooperative, but nobody, staff or student, had seen Luna since the end of the war. If she was at Hogwarts, she wasn't somewhere oft travelled.

Draco checked the Room of Lost Things first. Where else would a lost girl be?

Not there, apparently. He found plenty of lost things, but no lost people.

He scoured every secret passageway, every hidden room, every dungeon. He borrowed the Marauder's Map from Potter, not telling him why he needed it but insisting he'd return it in good condition. The man reluctantly parted with the map, but it didn't help. She wasn't on it.

Draco even asked Trelawney for help. She supplied nothing useful.

There was only one place he'd yet to look.

The Forbidden Forest.

* * *

He camped there for nearly a month, looking for her every day. He laughed bitterly about the fact that she was there, remembering something about "Tea with the Centaurs" from back when he was skulking around the streets of London late at night. It'd been almost two months since she'd gone missing, but she was a witch, and a resourceful one at that. She was still out there, and Draco was certain he was getting close.

He wasn't.

* * *

Exactly two months after she'd walked out her father's front door, he walked back in. The man couldn't go camping with Draco; he was too old for that, and he'd needed to stay home in case she returned.

"I couldn't find her, sir. I'm sorry."

Xenophelius started crying, and hugged Draco. Draco had expected such. He didn't shy away, he just comforted the man as best as he could.

At that exact moment, Luna Lovegood appeared not four feet from them, apparating into her living room.

And with the same abruptness, collapsing on the floor.

They immediately set to work helping her. Draco carried her up the stairs to her bedroom, resting her in her own bed and sitting by her side. Xenophelius brought her tea.

It grew cold.

* * *

Draco stayed beside her for three straight days. Healers came and did what they could, but she refused to wake.

On the third night, long after her father had gone to bed, Draco had sat there, holding her hand and willing her to wake up, when he'd felt something stiff in her pocket.

He withdrew his own wand from her pocket.

It was the one Potter had taken from him, the one that he'd used to duel the Dark Lord with. The one he'd thought was lost forever. She'd found it, after two months of searching, in the forest, and it'd nearly killed her. What had possessed her to go searching for it now, more than a year after the war was over, was beyond him. Maybe the same thing that'd possessed him to go looking for her, long before he knew why she was missing.

Attached to his wand was a note, written in what could only be her handwriting.

_My mum always said things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect._

_-Luna_

He pocketed the old wand, retrieving his new one from the same pocket and snapping it in half.

He clasped her hand in his own.

And he wept until morning.


End file.
